Mansfield Park

[porphyry]

I’ve been working lately writing little textbook introductions to various works of literature, currently Mansfield Park. The brief includes in this case an overview of the various film adaptations. If you wish to watch a film of it, view the 1983 BBC production. Below, however, is a slightly expanded version of my remarks on the post-modernist 1999 version:


One knows reason and art have been left behind upon hearing the line, “Don’t be so old-fashioned! It’s 1806 for heaven’s sake!’

Patricia Rozema filmed this version of Mansfield Park for theatrical release in 1999. Rozema abandons any attempt to adapt the novel in favor of a post-modernist critique. The character of Fanny Price is done away with and virtually replaced with Jane Austen herself (an amateur writer when Fanny’s age), or, rather, with a modern woman playing the part of Jane Austen, complaining against the necessity of marriage as a form of slavery from a feminist viewpoint. The main story becomes that of the rebellion of the Bertram brothers against their father. Sir Thomas (played by the Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter) is a monster who leers in a perverted fashion at Fanny and who rapes and tortures his slaves while in Antigua. Upon his return, he entertains the family one evening with a long lecture on slave breeding. Rozsema imagines herself clever for citing 18th century bibliography over whether or not ‘mulattos’ could breed or were sterile like mules. Edmund seeks to become a clergyman so he can escape dependence on his father, while Tom becomes an alcoholic to dull the moral turmoil of knowing his father is a slave owner and the dread of becoming one himself upon his inheritance. Rozema emphasizes elements of nineteenth century culture not present in the book, but of post-modern interest: Lady Bertram is an opium addict; the relationship between Fanny and Mary Crawford is filled with Sapphic tension (Rozema is a Lesbian and her lover has been romantically and legally entangled with Courtney Love), etc. The minimalist soundtrack and hackneyed steady-cam based cinematography prevent the development of any illusion the action takes place anywhere and at any time other than on a twenty-first century television screen (even had one seen it in the theater). Worst of all, the entire moral force of Rozema’s critique of the evils of the ancient régime (there’s unexplored intellectual territory!) is thrown away at the end when the film stops abruptly and something like a Saturday-morning cartoon starts. In an ending modeled on American Graffiti, Fanny as narrator tells us what happens to each of the characters in later years while we view them engaged in cheap slapstick routines (there is some wrestling over a muffin at the breakfast table, for instance). The worst of this, and it may be one of the worst 30 seconds of film I’ve ever seen, is when Fanny assures us that Sir Thomas, whom we have seen personally raping and murdering through the eyes of his son Tom, will now for no apparent reason act like a father from a 1950s sit-com and will give up being a sadistic slave plantation owner and instead pursue an honorable trade as a tobacco trader—yes, that is supposed to be a clever one-line joke.

Comments

[petrusplancius.livejournal.com]

The trouble with this kind of production is that the director etc. have such 'right-on' attitudes that you will find nothing whatever in it that is fresh and original, everything is so utterly predictable, although though they are evidently trying desperately hard to be original and above all, 'irreverent'. Although the approach is misguided in itself in my view, the trouble with this production is that it was executed so desperately badly, as you bring out in your review of it. Though Harold Pinter's performance does stick in my memory as being wonderfully creepy.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

You're quite right that the main problem is that it was a bad piece of film making. The cinematography consisted of endless helicopter shots alternating with steady-cam shots tracking at eye-level (a revelation when it was invented, I was Mesmerized by Kubrick's Shining when it premiered, but it's become so hackneyed since I can't even stand to watch that film anymore). Oddly, almost all the reviews posted on the web are by Janeites who rightly feel betrayed, but one constant theme in them is the concession that the cinematigrpahy was exellent. I suppose they were taking ocmfort in the familiar.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

You could probably, if you are willing, clear up some matters about Mansfield about which I am in dark ignorance. I was told by the denizens of the Austen-L that Sir Thomas selling the pastorship of Mansfield Park was not Simony becuase he did not sell the office, but the right to appoint the next parson. This seems like an incredibly fine distinction. What I wonder is how an appointment to a parish church is made today (I assume they no longer have any income attatched other than the voluntary donation of the congregation, but is that correct? I suppose individual churches, monasteries, etc. could still possibly own land or have some other right to rents from land, though surely not the compulary tithing that was then enforced by law?). My guess would be that all such appointemnts would be made by a bishop, or is that not the case? Surely money no longer changes hands in any way to gain such an appointment?

What I am dimly driving at is that when post-modern critics attack the unexamined assumptions of Austen's world, they require the people of that age to have been abolitionists and feminsits or else suffer the consequences of being damned as not politically correct. Yet to my knowldge they never touch on Simony as an abuse common in that time that is not tolerated now. Onviously this is a bit of a reductio ad absurdam and I don't know what I might do with the idea. But I would appreciate it if you could write briefly on the differnces in C of E practices bewtween then and now.

[petrusplancius.livejournal.com]

The organization of the C of E is a mystery that is only understood by people who becomed involved in its workings. The appointment of a parish priest varies acoording to who is the 'patron' who has the 'advowson'; that patron may be an individual, such as the bishop of the diocese, or it may be an institution such as a charity or the Crown. There is of course no possible profit in it now! And whoever is technically the patron, the parish council and churchwardens would usually play a fairly important part in the process I imagine. The stipends of parish priests are usually paid from the diocesan funds I think. The Church has fairly large incomes from land and investments, but these pay only a proportion of its expenses (less than a quarter I would have thought, and a proportion that has decreased since the war for various reasons, including bad investments during a property boom), so donations have to be raised from various sources to pay the expenses of the parish and diocese. Only part of this will come from direct donations within the parish. By contrast to the situation in Jane Austen's time (and later too) incomes are pretty even in different parishes. In relation to the general level of income, they are distinctly low, and have steadily declined in relative terms since Victorian times. I don't think that the people who make television adaptations of old novels would even know what simony was!

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the overview--there seems to be more continuity than I would have thought, owing to the releative lack of revolutionary activity in England, I suppose.

The situation in the Episcopalian Church here is becoming more complex. Appoinement of priests is exclusivley the business of Bishops, but lately many congregations have seceded from the authority of their old Bishop so that they will not recieve a priest from a Bishop contmainated by countenencing the ordination of women. Consequently they have frequently put themselves under the authority of African bishops.

On the Catholic front, our local Bishop has been attempting to destroy a traditionally Polish parish (the congregants now live throughout the area, none in the immediate neighborhood of the Church), probably over monetary issues, although the local press are reluctant or unable to comment on that point. In any case the Parish has been under excommunication for some time. However, they procured their own priest who claimed that he would defend their interests against the Bishop because of his own Polish ancestry and give them communion anyway--but it turns out this was only a cover on his part to introduce female assitant priests (there is some woman here who, after her husband died of cancer 30 years ago mysteriously received directly from God the power to ordain women, or so she says, who supplies them to him).

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

I hate attempts to bring the values of today to representations of the past - they're all so bloody worthy about it and they always miss the point. This approach goes further, it is the key to the way that much history is (re-)written now, by politicians and academics in particular. The wonderful egotism that comes from hindsight and self-righteousness.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

A more serious attempt was Spartacus which is an allegory about McCarthyism. In point of fact one of the main factors that bound Spartacus' followers together was his wife, a miracle working prophetess. I always thought that would make a more interesting film.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I wholeheartedly agree on that point. You cannot attach modern values to the past; it's disingenous at best and utterly destroys the work at worst. Although I did not see this film (I had taken the children to a carnival instead which isn't much of an improvement but they had fun), I think the worst adaptation of literature I have ever seen on film was some horrific attempt about ten years ago at Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Although I had reservations about that movie from the outset because Demi Moore played Hester Prynne, I went anyway. As the film opened, the message "Loosely Based on the Novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne"--well, that's when I got really scared and should have left right then as I wanted. I stayed and watched, stunned, as I watched the destruction of one of my favorite novels. The film's only redemptive moment was watching Robert Duvall play a very creepy Chillingworth quite well.

[himmapaan.livejournal.com]

One phrase: Thank you. :)